Meta’s New Lightweight AR Prototype Shows a Future Beyond Bulky VR Headsets

Increase / The future is so bright, Mark Zuckerberg has to wear sunglasses.

Until now, Meta’s money-losing Reality Labs division has focused mostly on bulky virtual reality headsets (and some weird Ray-Ban sunglasses without a display), so when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pulled out a 3.2-ounce pair of see-through augmented reality glasses during this year’s Meta Connect keynote, it represented a somewhat new direction for the company.

The prototype of the Orion AR glasses that Zuckerberg showed off today doesn’t mean Meta will be ready to release a pair of consumer AR glasses anytime soon. However, the demo does present a new vision for lightweight, wide-angle, see-through smart glasses that Zuckerberg calls “a glimpse of the future” and “a dream of Reality Labs.”

This is not your average screen

Zuckerberg said the main challenge in creating a comfortable pair of augmented reality glasses is that “they have to be glasses.” That means no bulky headset (like the Quest), no wires (like the Apple Vision Pro), and weighing less than 100 grams (compared to the full 515g for the Meta Quest 3). While there’s a small battery and “custom silicone” inside the lightweight glasses, Zuckerberg admitted that some of the processing happens in a “little puck” that wirelessly connects to the glasses themselves.

Orion is slightly thicker than real glasses, but much smaller than VR headsets.
A wireless “puck” helps with some of Orion’s processing, while a wrist strap provides a “neural interface.”
Goodbye screens, hello waveguides.
You too can look this stylish while wearing an AR headset.
Average Orion user shown actual size.
The “neural interface” headband lets Orion users interact without having to issue voice commands or make awkward, large hand gestures.

To achieve true augmented reality, Zuckerberg said Orion uses a screen that is “not really a screen.” Instead, the glasses use tiny projectors embedded in the arms that shoot light into specially designed waveguides. From there, the light goes to “3D nano-scale structures etched into the lenses” to show holographic images that can be layered at different depths and sizes onto a natural view of the real world as seen through the transparent lenses.

Zuckerberg said the challenge was making sure the images were sharp enough to capture fine detail and bright enough to be seen in a variety of lighting conditions. “This is not passthrough,” Zuckerberg emphasized during his speech. “This is the physical world with holograms projected onto it.”

Orion’s microprojection technology enables a field of view that Meta says is “the largest…in the smallest form factor of AR glasses to date.” In live demos for print, Meta said the field of view reaches 70 degrees, compared to just 52 degrees for Microsoft’s older Hololens 2 or 50 degrees for the Magic Leap One, to cite a few more limited examples of consumer AR.

To control these holograms, Orion users can use voice commands or hand and eye tracking, as already seen in the Quest VR headsets. But Zuckerberg also talked about a wristband with a “neural interface” — which the company has previously teased — that could read the tiny movements of your wrists and fingers even without a line of sight to the glasses themselves. That would let you interact with what’s on your glasses without having to awkwardly speak out loud or hold your hands in front of you like a zombie, Zuckerberg said.